The inadequate response of the Election Commission, media regulatory bodies, and the Delhi Police worsened the volatile situation that led to the anti-Muslim riots in Delhi in February 2020, a report has concluded. "There were significant warning signs of impending violence – the shooting attempts on anti-CAA protesters – that went unheeded," the report 'Uncertain Justice: A Citizens Committee Report on the North East Delhi Violence 2020' said.
The citizen's committee was formed in October 2020 and included justice Madan B Lokur, justice AP Shah, who is also the former chief justice of the Delhi High Court, justice RS Sodhi, justice Anjana Prakash and former Union home secretary GK Pillai. Meeran Chadha Borwankar a retired IPS who was the former director general of the Bureau of Police Research and Development was also part of the committee but withdrew in the final stages.
The committee found that the response of the Union home ministry to the 2020 Delhi riots was "inadequate" and elaborated on the role of news channels and social media in propagating hate against the Muslim community in Delhi.
Here are the highlights from the report:
2020 Delhi riots
The entire district of Northeast Delhi was engulfed in riots from February 23 to February 29 in 2020. Fifty-three people were killed, most of them Muslims. Properties were set afire and people were assaulted.
The report named Hindu "nationalist figures" such as Yati Narsinghanand and Ragini Tiwari, as well as BJP political leaders such as Kapil Mishra who" further spread hate messaging among their thousands of followers through social media platforms from December 2019."
While BJP leader Kapil Mishra raised "goli maro" slogans and threatened to shoot Muslims, Anurag Thakur publically raised the slogan ""desh ke gadaar ko" to which the crowd responded with "goli maro" at an election rally in January 2020. Two incidents of shooting near the site of the anti-CAA protest in Delhi's Jamia Nagar were reported soon after.
The report said some popular TV news channels framed the events around CAA as "Hindus versus Muslims with prejudice and suspicion against the Muslim community.".
"These channels concentrated on vilifying anti-CAA protests, fanning unsubstantiated conspiracy theories, and calling for their forcible shutdown," the report said.
How TV peddled hate
The report studied Republic and Times Now (English), and Aaj Tak, Zee News, India TV, and Republic Bharat (Hindi) to conclude how news channels abetted the hate against Muslims which finally culminated into the violent riots in February 2020.
The report said the six channels tried projecting the anti-CAA protests as "singularly disruptive and violent". " The coverage appeared to portray the protests as single-handedly responsible for the unfolding violence. The entire protest movement in Delhi, with a concerted focus on Shaheen Bagh, was shown as violent, conspiratorial, and communal," the report said.
Shaheen Bagh became the hotspot of the sit-in demonstration after women from the adjoining Muslim locality sat on peaceful protest demanding the rollback of the new citizenship law. "Various essential elements of the anti-CAA protests, including their substantive demands and peaceful sit-ins, were left out of the narrative, as was any comment on police violence," the report said.
The report found the language used by these news channels for their prime-time debates portrayed "Delhi's Muslims" as a "catch-all category for a potentially dangerous community with designs of war against the Indian state".
It said the "open accusations of criminality" made by the TV news channels against anti-CAA protesters were "highly irresponsible". "The language of anchors and panelists, and the phrasing of the visual tools on these shows, reveal the antagonistic messaging and sensationalist style," the report noted.
How social media aggravated hate speech
The report noted that there was a "frenzied and wide use of social media" from February 23, 2020 to February 24, 2020, the days that saw flare-ups and violence in northeast Delhi. It said the content of Facebook Live videos during these shared by politicians linked to the BJP and Hindu right-wing extremist groups were of "divisive Hindu-Muslim narratives."
"It is of note that these videos amassed upwards of thousands of views on Facebook," the report added.
The report said that social media "provided an effective medium to entrench the polarization of online consumers in an already communally fraught atmosphere post the passage of the CAA". Social media aggravated the already polarised and volatile atmosphere from December 2019 to February 2020, according to the report.
It said that BJP leaders such as Parvesh Sahib Singh, Anurag Thakur, and Kapil Mishra were "vociferous" in their opposition of the anti-CAA protests. "They also used social media platforms extensively to upload their speeches and rallies on Twitter and Facebook," the report said.
The report said that the slogan "Desh ke gaddaron ko, goli maaro saalon ko" (What should we do to the traitors of the country?) raised by Mishra and later repeated by Thakur became "emblematic of the polarisation sought." Mishra shared the video on Twitter on December 20, 2019.
The report also mentioned the formation of a WhatsApp group, the "Kattar Hindu Ekta" formed just after midnight on February 25, 2020 as the violence ensued. "While the group chats reveal the planned nature of the acts of violence, they also point to the circulation of certain tropes and narratives justifying acts of violence against Muslims," the report said.